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YANGON: Myanmar soldiers arrived at the Buddhist monastery
before dawn, telling the wary monks inside that they were being
brought to a breakfast sponsored by the military.
Instead, they were hauled into a windowless
building on the campus of a government school where they were
disrobed, beaten and interrogated by troops.
Scores of monks were released after six days of
suffering in the torpid heat and squalor of a building where 1,000
detainees were forced to use the concrete floor as a toilet and
where they were allowed only one small meal of rice and vegetables
each day.
One 18-year-old monk among those freed told his
story to AFP, explaining how even as the soldiers kicked and beat
him, he held to his religious ideals and prayed for the soldiers to
find peace.
“We were forced to sit like prisoners in the
building, kneeling with our heads down. We sat like this for two
days before we were disrobed,” he said.
Monks from sects aligned with the military
government performed the disrobing, stripping them of their maroon
cloth and forcing them to wear T-shirts and traditional sarong-like
longyis like ordinary men, he said.
“After being disrobed, we were beaten
again—punched, hit with sticks, and kicked,” he said. “We were
divided into groups of 10, and then questioned one by one. They
asked us if we had joined the protests, and who was the leader in
our monastery.”
When the interrogations ended, they were taken
in groups of 60 and locked into classrooms, where they were again
forced to kneel and to squat in a corner instead of using a toilet.
Similarly brutal treatment of monks during a
protest in early September helped fuel the peaceful street
demonstrations in the main city Yangon, which two weeks ago swelled
to 100,000 people led by monks.
The military cracked down hard, using baton
charges, tear gas and live weapons fire to break up the crowds,
leaving at least 13 dead. Many of the monks have been arrested or
have fled to the countryside.
This young survivor said that even some of the
soldiers were horrified at the treatment of the monks.
“The Buddhist soldiers came to apologize and
ask forgiveness. They said they only treated the monks this way
because they were ordered by high-ranking officials,” he said.
“Some of the monks told the Buddhist soldiers
that they would go to hell one day, and the soldiers cried, because
they knew that this was true,” he added.
In hopes of making peace, some of the soldiers
would bring water to the monks as they knelt in captivity.
He said he was among the lucky ones. Monks from
the Ngwekyaryan monastery were held in the same compound.
The raid on that monastery shocked neighbors who
saw pools of blood, shattered windows and spent bullet casings on
the floor.
The reason for the violence was that the monks
from Ngwekyaryan had tried to fight back against the soldiers, the
young monk said.
“Some of them were seriously injured. Their
eyes were swollen shut because they were beaten so badly. They
coudn’t see anything. They had injuries on their heads and arms.
Some of them had bones sticking out of their skin,” he said.
Eventually the prisoners were divided into
groups of those who joined the protests, those who led them, and
those who supported them, he said.
He was released along with dozens of others from
his monastery after he convinced the authorities that he had never
joined the protests.
Now he hopes to run away to the village where he
was born, to seek some quiet and safety.
But he insists he harbors no anger toward the
soldiers who tortured him, and instead prays that they eventually
see the error of their ways.
“I don’t feel angry at the soldiers. I only
sending loving kindness to them, so that they may find peace one
day,” he said.
--AFP
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